
Lockdown Lessons: Optimization
Growing up most of us must have solved the following question which went something like this: What is the minimum no. of weighing in a balance machine to be done to find the heavy coin in a pack of 12 coins? The answer to the question is either two or three. The solution is that we make two groups of five coins and one group of two coins. We weigh the two groups of five coins and if both are equal then we compare the remaining two with any coin from the previous group. In cas